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  My head is pounding when I wake up. I barely slept. Worse, I’m horny, and I’ve decided that I’m not taking the risk of having the batteries expire on me again. Moon is turning me into a nympho after one short kiss. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy sex. I just usually prefer the purple wonder over an actual man. Little mess and easy to walk away from when I’m satisfied. Add in no drama and my toy makes the perfect boyfriend.

  In the light of day, I’m rather flustered that my orgasm didn’t rock my socks the way it should have. My sexual craving seems to be for Moon, but that is not gonna happen.

  I decided sometime during my sleepless night that I was done with Moon and would stick to my guns this time. I’m behaving like a man and allowing a pretty body to keep my mind off the fact that he’s bad news. I laid awake with my mind on two things. One is dumping Moon’s ass before he gets any further ideas. The other thing I dwelled on is Moon’s first name. I racked my brain. I know someone mentioned it one day. It was an odd name for an odd man.

  Now that I’m awake, I let those thoughts go. It’s more important to discover how Moon entered my apartment. If what I suspect is true and he duplicated my key, I need to change my locks. Regardless, there will be no more dates—forced or otherwise—with the incredibly hot thug who left me high and dry last night. This fixating on Moon will stop.

  To take my mind off Moon, I work on my embezzlement case. I’m pretty sure I’ve found the guilty party; I just need to back up a few things first. I call my dad and ask if I can e-mail the spreadsheets to him. I’ve struggled through the numbers for days and think I finally found a pattern. Dad’s my ace in the hole and he’ll see it right off.

  “Hey, Mak,” he greets me. Only my mother calls me Madison. Dad started the whole Mak thing when I was a baby. He didn’t like it when people referred to me as Mad or Maddy. He wanted a boy and says having me was the luckiest day of his life. Mak stuck.

  I explain my case, ask about the Florida weather, and ask about Mom.

  “You got time to talk to her?”

  “No, tell her I promise to call in the next few days.”

  Dad understands this because Mom harps on everything. She means well, but if you don’t have time to talk, she’s the last person you want to be stuck on the phone with. I disconnect and e-mail the documents to him. I take my shower and head out the door into the hothouse known as Phoenix.

  I stop by the grocery store and pick up some dog treats and a pint of Jack. I also hit Micky D’s for two Big Macs before heading to Sunnyslope. Driving through the back streets where I worked patrol is hell. Melancholy swamps me. I miss the cop life so fucking much.

  Within five minutes, I locate Cucumber Bill. One Big Mac and the pint of Jack is for him. I met Bill when I busted him for snagging a pint from the local convenience store. He did three months, and I felt so guilty about leaving Big without his owner that I decided to find a temporary home for him. Bill isn’t all there mentally and hasn’t been for a long time. I’ve seen shoplifters walk away from court with a slap on the wrist. Bill was one of the unfortunate ones who had a sucky lawyer and a prior.

  Bill is sitting in the shade cast by the side of a building on a pile of flattened out boxes to keep his ass from burning on the hot pavement. Big is snuggled up beside him with his head buried between Bill’s shirt and the wall. An old filthy towel covers Bill’s head. He’ll go to the park in the late afternoon and stay there as long as he can. It gives Big a chance to roam. I’m catching them both at naptime.

  I park about ten yards away and approach slowly. I disregard Bill’s stale scent. “Hi, Bill, how are you? Remember me, Mak, kinda like Big Mac?” He watches me from beneath the towel. I’m holding a gallon of water, the McDonald’s bag, and the plain brown paper bag all in my left hand.

  Strong hand empty—always. I plan to never break the habit. I hold the heavy weight up with my good arm and get the, “Yea, yea, yea,” I desire.

  I place the items on the ground a foot away so Bill can reach them. He decides when to look inside the bags, not me. He immediately scoops the bags up and moves them closer. I crouch down. “How’s Big?”

  “Sokay,” he mumbles.

  “One of those Big Macs is for Big and one for you. I hope you’ll eat it, Bill.”

  “Sokay.”

  “You want me to wet down the towel for your head?” I ask gently.

  He takes it off and hands it to me. His arm is coated in filth, the skin rough and patchy. The towel smells worse than he does, but I expected that. I don’t see lice crawling on it and it wouldn’t matter if they were. It’s part of the job—never let them see your emotions unless it’s calculated. Keep a level tone and take disgust and fear out of the equation. I wet the towel with the bottled water and hand it back. Bill puts it over his head and peers from under it again.

  “I’m looking for some street info, Bill. Have you heard about bad things happening in the neighborhood?”

  His body goes tense. I wish I could see his eyes. I leave the question hanging without rushing him. Finally, he responds, “No good, yea, yea, yea, no good.”

  This is actually more than he usually gives me. “What’s no good, Bill?”

  “Bad, bad. No good. Yea, yea, yea.”

  “What about Kennedy? You hear anything about Officer Kennedy?”

  Bill moves fast. He picks up his items from the ground and places them in his shopping cart. He puts Big in the cart too. I don’t say a word when he takes the water, booze, and McDonald’s bag. I back up and watch him wheel the old squeaky cart away.

  Sweat drips down my brow and my tee is soaked. My brown BDUs are damp too. I need water, so I walk back to Sally for my water bottle. It was completely frozen when I left the apartment earlier. It’s lukewarm now. I take a healthy swallow.

  I search for Mama Kane for an hour, but I can’t find her. A homeless man I’m unfamiliar with tells me she’s at Veterans hospital. Her goat went with animal control. I head to the hospital and receive bad news. Someone assaulted Mama Kane and she’s in critical condition. A nurse tells me that no one has visited her and that I’m the first to ask how she’s doing.

  It’s so incredibly sad. As a cop, I was limited in what I could do. The homeless are considered a problem. It was my job to keep them in line. Don’t get me wrong, I helped where I could. It’s never enough, though.

  The nurse tells me that the cops want to know when she dies. This should make me angry, but I know it means the detectives have a suspect. If Mama Kane dies, the charges will change to include homicide. The nurse doesn’t know anything about the goat.

  I leave the hospital and swing back into Sunnyslope to head to the Humane Society, which is off Hatcher. My friend Kelsy works there. I love animals, but can’t have pets at my apartment. I can’t afford one either. Coming here always makes me sad, but I need to find out about Mama Kane’s goat.

  “Hey, Mak, what’s happening?” Kelsy asks as soon as I walk through the doors. Barking dogs can be heard from a hallway to my left. I try not to let the sound get to me.

  Kelsy is my age, mid-twenties, and has worked here since a year after graduating high school. We met our sophomore year and became friends. She has two dogs—one blind and one with three legs. Cats also, and I think the last time we caught up, it was four black ones. She takes the cats no one wants and secretly tries to find homes for them. A lot of that goes on here, but because they euthanize, the Society gets a bad rap. Kelsy explained that no-kill shelters do exactly as they advertise and don’t do the killing themselves. When they can no longer keep an animal, they bring it to the Humane Society and let them do the evil deed. Bullshit is what I say. It’s a necessary evil, and I’m only glad that it isn’t me doing it. I saw too many loose dogs running through the streets at night while on patrol. Some were nothing but skin and bone. If people spay and neuter their pets, this wouldn’t be a problem.

  “Not much, Kelsy. I came from Veterans and Mama Kane. It doesn’t look good. I’m looking for her goat.” Mama
Kane would never tell anyone her goat’s name. She just called it “goat.”

  “So sorry, Mak. I heard one of her friends wigged out and it went bad. They arrested him and animal control picked up the goat.”

  “Could you do me a favor?”

  “Sure, if you take a kitten for me.” She is such a weasel.

  I groan. “You know I can’t, and you’re a bitch for asking.”

  I get a grin. “Sneak her in. The apartment management will never know. People do it all the time.”

  “They’ll know.”

  Her shoulders drop. “What do you need?” she asks on a sigh.

  “A call to animal control to check on the goat. I don’t want the department to know I’m working the area.” Kelsy knows all about how I’m treated by the officers who were once my friends. It pisses her off. She thinks a PI is way cooler than being a cop. She also knows that animal control in this area has close ties with the Wendell Precinct. One of the animal control officer’s husbands works patrol in Sunnyslope.

  She makes the call while I wait. I can only hear her side of the conversation. She tells whoever answered the phone to call her if Mama Kane dies because she might have a home for the goat.

  “You think you have a home?” I ask as soon as she hangs up the phone.

  “No, but I think you’ll find one.”

  This time I groan loud and long. “I hate you.”

  “You love animals and someday you’ll be in a place where you can have a menagerie. Then you’ll pay me back for all the favors I do for you.”

  When I worked this area, Kelsy gave me dog food to hand out to the homeless while I was on graveyard shifts, and she swung some free medication my way too. I know she paid for it out of her own pocket, but she never let me help. It’s her way of giving back to this small, nutzoid community within the big city.

  I head out to my boiling hot car wondering how the hell I’ll find a home for a goat.

  Chapter Eleven